[July] What are you reading?

[Pants]

Beginning The Scar by China Mieville.

Ditto. I'm putting down The Stand in favor of The Scar.

 

[Tewligan]

Good stuff so far. The teleportation technology of the story is very compelling -- you're not really teleported, you're destroyed and recreated at the quantum level. This can wreak havoc on a person if it's done too many times, particularly on one's mind as a few memories are wiped out each time you do it. Makes me want to make a house rule for D&D.

Hmm - that might just cure PC's of their annoying habit of teleporting absolutely everywhere, thus avoiding any complications betwixt points A and B. Yoink!

Anyway, as to what I'm reading. I am once again trying to wade through The Silmarillion. Every few years I take it into my head to try to finish the damn thing, and every time I fail. It doesn't look like 2004 is going to be any different - maybe I'll go ahead and accept defeat early, and start training for 2007. I'm itching to reread the Thomas Covenant and Elric series - maybe I'll swing by the bookstore at lunchtime tomorrow to see if I can find shiny new copies. If I can then find the TIME to read them, I'll be golden.

 

[Welverin]

I finished Manta's Gift, by Timothy Zahn, which was rather good and have started Angelmass, also by Zahn.

Anyway, as to what I'm reading. I am once again trying to wade through The Silmarillion. Every few years I take it into my head to try to finish the damn thing, and every time I fail. It doesn't look like 2004 is going to be any different - maybe I'll go ahead and accept defeat early, and start training for 2007. I'm itching to reread the Thomas Covenant and Elric series - maybe I'll swing by the bookstore at lunchtime tomorrow to see if I can find shiny new copies. If I can then find the TIME to read them, I'll be golden.

Why don't try breaking it up, reading a section or two at a time in between things you don't have as much trouble with, i.e. sips instead of gulps?

 

[Mallus]

Right now I'm trying not to read House of Chains by Steven Erikson. I bought the US edition of Gardens of the Moon, devoured it, then ordered the rest used from Amazon, all from different sellers. Of course they didn't have the decency to arrive in order...

So I grabbed two collections of short stories from my bookshelf in an attempt to distract myself... Flannery O'Conners A Good Man is Hard to Find --see current sig-- and Denis Johnson's Jesus's Son. Two classics, one old, one new-ish.

If you have any appreciation, at all, for the short story, I truly, madly, deeply recommend trying Jesus's Son. Find a nice bookstore, one with seating, and read the first story "Car Crash While Hitchhiking". It's a revelation...

 

[Sir Brennen]

Beginning The Scar by China Mieville

Me too. I find it a quicker read than the Dickens-esque first novel, Perido St. Station, though that novel was amazing, too. Maybe I'm just getting use to his style, which is very literary, reminding me of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series, in more ways than one.

Anyone interested in steampunk fantasy should read Mieville - though I would put the "mundane" tech level at around American Civil War era. Some of the other concepts seem to harken to more hard-core cyberpunk, with the same so-many-ideas-per-page imagination associated with the best writers in that genre.

 

[Silver Moon]

Reading the "Op-Center" series by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik.

 

[Pielorinho]

I adore China Mieville, and would bear his children if I could. Once y'all finish The Scar, you lucky tweakers, you'll be just in time for his new book The Iron Council. Me, I've had to wait over a year for it, gleaning my Mieville fix through the odd short story.

He does seem to be an author you either love or hate. Other than Le Guin, there's no other living author I'd rather read.

Daniel

 

[Sir Brennen]

Once y'all finish The Scar, you lucky tweakers, you'll be just in time for his new book The Iron Council.

Then just to rub it in, since I picked up The Scar in paperback, there's a sneak preview excerpt from The Iron Council at the back of the book.

Me, I've had to wait over a year for it, gleaning my Mieville fix through the odd short story.

Where has he published short works? Are they set in the same world as the novels? While I love the setting, I'd be curious to see what else he's got up his sleeve.

 

[Pielorinho]

My lovely wife just picked up The Thackery P. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases, a delightful book in which authors like Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, and China Mieville write up synopses of diseases like Ballistic Organ Syndrome (exactly what it sounds like), Espectare Necrosis (in which the anticipation of gangrene causes its inset, even in other people), Mongolian Death Worm Infestation, and Hsing's Spontaneous Self-Flaying Sarcoma, just for a few examples. It's grim and hilarious and weird, and is where I've gotten my latest China Mieville fix.

Daniel

 

[Valanthe the Sleepless]

Just finished devouring 2 books.

The first was Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris. It her 4th Sookie Stackhouse book. I really enjoyed it, and I love the character of Sookie. I have already read the previous 3 novels and can't wait until Harris writes another.

And then I just finished Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton. It's really great read about his struggles with the decisions he made along the way since leaving Star Trek. Lots of little stories about then and the years inbetween. I really enjoyed it, and really related to a lot of it. Most of it is taken right from the stuff he has been posting on his blog at wilwheaton.net since the beginning in 2001.